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Content | Dont take the 'P' out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs |
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| Written by Jon Trinder on Monday, 14 November 2005 | |||||||||
“What’s the best PDA to buy?” This is a question I have been asked a lot. If you also work with computers or PDAs you have probably heard the same question. What was your answer? Let's remember that the ‘P’ in PDA, stands for PERSONAL, not portable and personal things can be devilishly difficult to choose for someone else.Let’s forget about PDAs for a moment and pick another "Best", let’s imagine PDAs are breakfasts (okay some of them have been a dogs breakfast, but I digress). Anyway you have heard all about breakfasts and you think it's time you found out what all the fuss is about. So you ask your workmates which they prefer and you discover there’s a hardcore of people who go with cereals, others a fry up and some say they don’t bother as they have a big lunch. Sigh! This is not going to be an easy choice. Let’s try another analogy, right then which is the best car? Well, again, that rather depends what you are using it for and where you are using it. For a grand prix an F1 car is a better choice than a Mini. To carry a lot of luggage an estate car is better, but for parking in and around town a Mini may be better. For fuel consumption a smaller car may be better and will still get you from a to b and for some people a bicycle is better...Meantime others walk or use public transport. All these choices are tricky because they are a very personal choice. Let’s try another…What is the best sort of house, semi, bungalow, flat, high rise, tent, boat or there’s those dwellings that combine most of the features of a car with the features of a house. Why not get a Winnebago, after all that does what your car and your house does and more! But there is a problem with that, as I like to update my car more often than my house so perhaps I am better with a car and a house, or a car and a caravan. In fact perhaps I’d prefer a house and a car and for some occasions a push-bike. Or indeed a desktop machine, a laptop and a PDA! Okay so lets get back to PDAs, surely its going to be much easier to identify which of them is ‘best’, no I hate to break this news but there is no ‘best’ PDA! Asking which is the best PDA is like asking, “which is the best breakfast?”1 and we’ve seen how difficult that question was. A PDA is a PERSONAL device and what suits one person may not suit another. The best device also depends on what you want to use it WITH. Many first time users have NO IDEA what a PDA can actually do. Do you need to sync to your outlook/exchange diary? Or just pick up email occasionally, or keep notes on it, or edit Word documents for the majority of these applications the platform (e.g. Palm or Pocket PC) is unimportant, but if you want your entire class to use a specific application or your employer insists you all use a particular application then you may have to all use the same device... Uh-oh, where did the personal aspect just go? Well once you have any device the personal qualities of the device can be reinforced by a combination of the customization of the device by the installation of applications and the content of the data stored on it. When used in an education environment the powers that be (administrators, accounts, support people), like consistency, conformity and want us all to use the same device, for many reasons this makes sense but depending on where you are standing it is at odds with the nature of a PDA. For many the best use of a mobile device in the classroom may be to provide materials that are useable on any device, though not always practical, leaving aside versions and types of operating system and hardware some content just wont work for some screen sizes. Also what fits in the school scenario may not be usual in HE and FE. Maybe we should enlighten students HOW they can make the best of personal and mobile technologies but leave it up to them as to which device they use and what they use it for, give them the information and let them make their own Personal choice. 1This quote is attributed to guitarist Jeff Beck when asked, “who is the best guitarist in the world?” JON TRINDER Jon Trinder is a Ph.D. student in the Robert Clark Centre for Technological Education at the University of Glasgow, where he is investigating the potential of PDAs in higher education. He has been an enthusiastic PDA user and developer for many years and also authors PDA shareware and bespoke applications for www.ninelocks.com. He works for the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Glasgow University in the computing support team providing network and system support and authoring specialised software. Jon founded the pda-edu@jiscmail.ac.uk to provide a meeting place for anyone interested in using PDAs in education to exchange information and advice.
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